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     &n NIXON   Table
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Nixon was elected President of the United States because he promised a quick end to the war in Vietnam. However, Nixon's platform of peace with honor and Vietnamization culminated into policy platforms that extended the war in Vietnam by another four years. "Peace with Honor" as a policy entailed the withdrawal of US troops and in increase in the saturation bombings in North Vietnam. Since China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution it was internally weak and disunited due to the extent that it could not lend substantive numbers of troops to aid the Viet Cong. At this time Sino-Soviet relations had turned sour after 1960, when the soviets dropped their financial support for Mao's Great Leap Forward program, resulting in mass starvation and death, numbering just over 30 million. The Chinese turned to the US to counteract the soviet spheres of influence in Mongolia and Vietnam. In 1972 a process of normalization of relations between the US and China officially culminated in the inaugural visit of Nixon to China to toast Champaign with Mao and Zhou en Lai at a highly publicized state dinner. Nixon would later travel to Moscow in articulating the aims of his new foreign policy doctrine, triangular detente, between China and Russia. Detente as a policy intended to keep the two former communist allies now embittered enemies guessing as to whom would first sell out the other's interests to the Americans first. Russell D. Buhite describes the administration's use and objectives in using detente. "The purpose of this [diplomacy] was to create doubt in the minds of the leaders in each Communist state about each other's agreements with the United States: to use improved relations with the Chinese to make the Soviet's more manageable and use better relations with the Soviet's to make the Chinese more conciliatory."(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 139) Detente was also an attempt to make the soviet's dependant upon American wheat shipments. In 1972 The US exported 25% of its wheat crop to the USSR alone. The single most successful feature of Detente however, was an effort to limit nuclear arms proliferation that culminated with the Salt I Nuclear arms limitation treaty in the same year. Nixon's prolongment of the war in Vietnam triggered a major public backlash in the domestic front. The invasion of Cambodia triggered massive protest demonstrations at Kent State and Jackson State precipitating the incidents of lethal retaliation by US National Guardsmen opening fire on US students. Nixon in his own stubbornness refused to be deterred by these incidents and increased the saturation bombing of Northern Vietnam. The end result of this increased escalation of air power and troop demobilization culminated in the loss of 15 B-52's and a stiffened Vietnamese resolve that the war would continue until the Americans had left Indo China. In 1973 Nixon in the midst of the Watergate scandal agrees to an unconditional troop withdrawal from Vietnam. The Vietnam War could not have been won in the context of original US objectives in Indo China, in that the US did not largely envision that the outcome would have involved their need to maintain an occupying force at the expense of installing a functional US friendly regime that would support the geopolitical and geoeconomic status quo. America had tied its fortunes to Europe through the Marshall Plan, but the ideologies that breed undifferentiated interests in a world of limited means meant that in maintaining the 'status quo' in the third world, meant that the US generally supported regimes that professed anti-Communist rhetoric. Third world economies were linked in an exchange commodity mode of vertical inequality with the core g7 nations, in that their economies relied on import substitution, requiring foreign, and core investment, to industrialize their economies. Inherently, third world nations locked in this system lost a good deal of political and economic autonomy in public policy, in that third world debt acted as leverage to prevent further economic development and specialization beyond cash cropping, and light industrial manufacturing. The commercialization of third world agriculture, increased their dependence on US grain imports, subsides for US farmers that could undercut local and regional indigenous agricultural export zones. The Vietnam War presented itself as a moral failing of the US government in the minds of its citizens. The American public through demonstrations had gradually forced Nixon to withdrawal troops, but the overall outcome was what became known as the 'Vietnam Syndrome' in which the US was forced to justify its later interventions into third world countries in the name of peace and stability and risk losing face or international prestige. The policy Consensus on poverty and security as envisioned by JFK failed to materialize throughout successive US administration involvement in Vietnam. The American public would become somewhat united in the informal view that politicians in general after Nixon were a Motley bunch of oligharical elitists, that dictated public policy through the 'silent majority.' The main reason why Nixon withdrew troops from Vietnam was that the Europeans refused to continue to foot the cost of the war. The Vietnam War had caused massive inflation and the US was now faced with a trade imbalance and was now indebted to all of Europe and Japan. Walter Lafeber describes the process in which Nixon delinked the dollar from the gold standard an effort to forestall European claims on American currency. "First he understood that the United States was no longer strong enough economically to back the dollar, the only real international currency, with gold, as it had since 1945, because its gold supply was running out as the metal was used to pay debts overseas. Nixon instead announced that the dollar would float--that is, would be left to the whims of the marketplace where private business and other governments could directly influence its worth."(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 148) Lafeber continues his analysis of Nixon's foreign policy aims, by noting that after Nixon withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, he tried to secure a balance of trade with Japan, and supported the Shah of Iran who continued to trade oil with the US during the OPEC embargo. By meeting with Soviet and Chinese leaders, Nixon's policies of detente hoped to play those two regional powers off of each other and that in lieu of America's diminished economic standing he could still accomplish containment, now that commitments in Vietnam could no longer be rationally supported, by consensus policies. Ultimately it was Nixon's paranoia that led to his own undoing. In looking back at the Nixon administration, the view at the time was that this was a classical case of a breach or abuse of power on the pluralisim of American democracy. Nixon as a paranoid racist at times, could do little to relate with the Third world beyond his narrow economic security framework. An example of Nixon's infamous racial epetephs could be best described in the case of the Angola revolution which led to American intervention to support the porteguse colonial regime. The Soviet's had intervened on the side of the rebels and to to which Nixon surmised the nation of Angola as one big 'tar baby' that made their desires for self determination fatalisticlly doomed by Nixons own views of racial hiearchy. Since the Vietnam War had occured without congressional approval, Congress after Nixon passed the War Powers Act, limiting the actions of future presidents who had carved out considerable policy consensus through their use of interventionist foreign policy throughout the cold war. In all most historians extoll the early successes of Nixon's strategy of detente as begining the process of normalization of trade relations between the 1st and 2nd world. However, these same historians fault Nixon for being overly preoccupied with controlling domestic checks to his power such as Congress and the Democrat party, which in sum caused him to conduct what Stephen Ambrose defined a 'secret diplomacy.' Nixon as did Kissinger, felt that american public opinion could never fully comprehend the real politic of the US cold war balance of power system. Rather American support was created through ideological policy platforms and that it was the ideology of fear that Nixon utilized as a rapid consensus builder for his foreign policy programs. "Kissinger argued that Americans, without the long historical experiences of Europeans did not appreciate the neccessity to follow complex balance of power policies that required subtlety, paitence, and direct confrontation with those, such as the Soviets and their communist satellites, who tried to upset the balance of power--a balance that after all was in favor of the US." (American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 150) Thus Nixon and Kissinger percieved that there was a real need to go above the conventional contraints imposed by domestic opinion and at times the Constitution in pursuit of the 'greater good.' Next Page: Ford's Pardon & Carter's Trilateralisim
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The case of Vietnam had not stopped the US practice of intervention in the third world to maintain the economic status quo, rather it led to a proliferation of US led smaller scale counter insurgency campaigns and low intensity conflict doctrines which proliferated throughout the US military intelligentsia and on the battlefields of the third world as well. In general these new military conflicts were based on small scale regional civil wars between nationalist third world factions, and foreign sponsored puppet regimes, installed to facilitate the free flow of western capital investment. Kissinger would maintain that the failure of détente had to do with a ‘weakened’ Ford Presidency; the power to negotiate had been frustrated by a distrustful congress. The Legislative branch had come to view the evolution of the increasing power of the executive branch as it had increased during the Cold War as a growing affront to the intentions of the framers of the constitution. Furthermore, Détente had actually led to an escalation of US involvement in Vietnam due to the increased bombings of North Vietnam, and Nixon had openly toyed with the idea to use nuclear weapons to end the war. Détente when combined with US foreign policy seemed to engender a volatile brood of amoral politics. Ultimately, Ford was unable to contend with stagflation, a factor that was residual to the earlier ‘Nixon era’ Arab OPEC embargo that led to his defeat in the 1976 presidential elections. THE CARTER DOCTRINE"The overwhelming dependence of Western nations on vital oil supplies from the Middle East, and the pressures of change in many nations of the developing world constitute a threat to global peace, to East-West relations, and to regional stability and to the flow of oil." Jimmy Carter is elected in 1976 relying on his image as a Washington outsider. He advanced the nation that he was bringing the moral high ground back to US foreign policy. Essentially, Carter was planning to use human rights as diplomatic leverage with the USSR and as a prelude to intervention in the third world in support of anti-leftist regimes. Carter’s agenda often contradicted with his politico-moral stance which stands to reason why now he is a better diplomat then a former head state. Yale Historian, Gaddis Smith argues that Carter was more interested in creating clear cut foreign policy agendas then focusing on a clear cut program for human rights. However, the moral implications of the real politic weighed heavily on Carter and so he would often waffle from his original policies of strict humanitarian interventionism, in favor of US military strategic goals. However, Carter did set an important precedent in US foreign policy one of US military’s role as the world’s humanitarian police man, an ideological agenda that would endear itself to in one form or another to the rhetoric of further Presidents to come. Lafeber and James Bill describe how Carter continued to trade with the Shah of Iran despite the repeated human rights abuses by the Shah’s SAVAK, secret police. “"In the Middle East, as James Bill has argued, the Shah of Iran was one of the world’s worst offenders against human rights, but Carter ignored the Shah’s transgressions because he needed Iran’s oil and military cooperation.”"(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 152) Carter’s waffling wasn’t just confined to Iran it also extended its sway into Latin America. In 1979, when Salvadorian troops killed four American women he imposed some sanctions. When a leftist revolt happened in El Salvador in 1980, Carter supported the same anti-leftist regime with US military hardware to keep the new leftist faction from assuming power. Carter with the urging of his NSC advisor, Zbigniew Brezinski also wanted to maintain a system of détente with the Chinese and the Russians. However, Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state maintained that there was little to be derived from Sino-American cooperation, in that such a proposal catered to Soviet paranoia of being engulfed by a Sino US alliance. In 1979, the US formally recognized the PRC and in the UN, China was formally admitted to its position on the UN security council. The motivating factor for Sino-American accommodation stemmed from Soviet attempts to exert spheres of influence in Ethiopia, which the US reciprocated by extending their influence into Somalia. The Conflict is resolved when the SALT II treaty is signed, in the same year. However, in this same year the Soviet’s began their version of the Vietnam War with the invasion of Afghanistan, a 10 year war that led to a stalemate and a Russian withdrawal. However, the SALT II treaty never accomplished its entire target goals on arms reduction and arms proliferation continued throughout the nineteen eighties. Lafeber notes that while Carter is pressing for more arms control with the Soviet’s he is singularly calling for,.."”the largest new US weapons program in 30 years.”"(American Age, 701) The Failure of SALT II occurred before the ink had dried on the agreement when the Soviet’s invaded Afghanistan in efforts to establish a continuing theme of gaining a foothold in the oil rich middle east. America’s economy was beginning to falter as well at this time due to increased dependence on foreign energy supplies. Carter’s response to this is twofold. One he establishes a new cabinet level post, the department of Energy, and the other was his announcement of the Carter Doctrine, which closely resembled the Eisenhower doctrine, in the way regional stability was a means to an end, so as to prevent Soviet hegemonic control over Arab oil states, which would undoubtedly have affected oil prices in the US, and vicariously the rest of the US economy as well. Carter imposed economic sanctions against the soviet’s and tried to bind Europe and Japan to take America’s initiative and impose sanctions as well. These countries generally rebuffed such attempts, to forge trade solidarity after Vietnam had taxed their currencies, hence the US muffed under Carter when he attempted to lobby for liberal unilateralist monetarist policies. During this time he also had the CIA begin supplying the Afghan Mujahadin rebels with arms and munitions. Carter also tried to implement a Trilateral Commission comprised of American, W. European, and Japanese businessman who would regionally act in concert to preserve the economic status quo. Lafaber describes the objectives of the trilateral Commission: “Itr aimed to bridge foreign policy differences among the three most powerful hubs in the world, and to work coordinated economic trade policies before trade wars erupted.”(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 155) However, Japan continued to rely on trade protectionism and its trade deficit with the US rose to 12 billion dollars by 1980. The commission also ran into a number of pitfalls in its attempt to economically isolate the Middle East from the USSR, when Japan and Europe continued to trade with Moscow in defiance of US sanctions. Furthermore the Soviet’s began deploying 180 mobile SS-20 nuclear missiles that targeted all the major European cities. Europe’s leaders doubted that the US would sacrifice Chicago, for Bonn, Germany. Carter also approved the US military creation of the neutron bomb that registered low blast yields and high radiation levels designed to wipe out populations, but ostensibly designed to preserve material infrastructure. In perhaps a bright moment of the Carter Presidency the Camp David Accords, brokered in March, 1979 managed to achieve a brief cease fire between Egypt and Israel as a result of their 1967 war in which Israel had secured portions of the Gaza strip and the West Bank as recompense for that earlier failed Egyptian offensive. The USSR is also pushing for a peace settlement and Carter managed to beat them to it bringing the Arabs to the American negotiating table first. However, to add a note of futility to the Carter Presidency, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President is assassinated by Arabs who see peace with Israel as the ultimate sellout to Arab identity. Meanwhile during this time Iran is in the middle of a revolution. In 1979 the Shah is deposed by the Ayatollah and he pleads with the US for asylum and medical treatment for his terminal cancer. Carter allows him to enter the United States sparking mass riots in Tehran. This problem was exacerbated further by oil prices being ‘increased by 56% and to add further levity to the situation Iranian militants stormed the American embassy taking 76 hostages. This will cause Carter to lose the 1980 Presidential elections allowing Ronald Reagan to broker the hostage release upon assuming the Presidential office. In all Carter failed to win domestic and international consensus for his foreign policy objectives. This was in part due to his being an outsider to Washington politics as well as his morals not being able to meet his politics, especially in his selective application of his human rights policy, often supporting the repressive status quo in the name of economic order and stability. Carter started out optimistic and then in the end as Gaddiss Smith notes, he then made the ‘return to militarism’ when his ideas failed him. He shifted back into the traditional Cold Warrior stance of confrontation and unknowingly cost himself the 1980 election. However, Carter's 46 billion dollar defense budgetary increase, between 1979-1980 would later set the tone for Reagan’s massive rearmament campaign and provide the bureaucratic impetus for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - Star Wars. |
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Ronald Reagan has been described as the great communicator. This was due to his ability to sell his administrative policies to Congress and the American people in simple terms. These initiatives were to emphasize military strength and at the same time provide for a reduction in taxes. Reagan’s policies came to be known as Reaganomics and while his administration was instrumental in the Soviet collapse under Bush, (--even though the CIA had failed to predict the demise of the USSR,) as a long term economic philosophy it ultimately failed to be solvent. In international affairs Reagan’s militarization platform increased arms proliferation among the Soviets with his SDI Star Wars proposal, however, this phantom program is credited with finally bankrupting the USSR. Between 1981-1986, Reagan increased the military budget to 300 billion dollars annually. (Major problems in American Foreign Relations, 728) In part this was an effort to outspend the Soviet's whose economy had long since stagnated and declined since the 1970's. However, few noticed for In the 1970’s this problem did not appear as so acute, Communism was on the rise and indeed it was the West and the US that looked ineffectual after Vietnam. The communist party institutionalized its control over society replacing gulags with cronies of the party. In terms of the standard of living, the period between 1958-1971 saw soviet infant mortality rates halved from 40.6 to 22.9 deaths per 1000 infants. Indeed after WWII The Soviet Union economy grew at an average rate of 6% a year. However, after 1970 economic development began to stagnate and while the Soviet Union was committed to heavy industry while it could not begin the transition to an emerging high tech economy that had begun to evolve in the west. While the USSR attempted to increase production it lacked the means, i.e., spare parts and came to be increasingly dependant upon foreign trade in raw materials. USSR economic growth fell to 5.5% between 1971-1975, and then fell to 2.7% between 1976-1980, and then 1.9% from 1981-1985. Soviet manufacturing began to lose its foreign market demand and hence exports declined as well. "Perestrokia simply disrupted production and led to severe shortages of goods."(Goldstone, 264) Reagan also tried to implement arms reduction talks and redefine the SALT II agreements which allowed the Soviet's to keep 300 large nuclear missiles. This as Lafeber maintains demonstrated Reagan's lack of knowledge concerning Soviet missile technology in that their conventional nuclear warheads maintained the same technology put in place by soviet nuclear engineers in the 1960's, and as such could not afford to implement the technological overhaul demanded by SALT II. Reagan's SDI 'Star Wars' plan was envisioned as providing a laser shield in the event of a nuclear attack. It relied on the theory that satellites could be outfitted with lasers to shoot down soviet nuclear missiles. However, SDI had no practical applications outside the realm of academia. However, during 1983-1992 Congress earmarked a total of 30 billion dollars on Star Wars related research. Lafeber describes the psychological implications SDI had on American lawmakers. "During Reagan's term Star Wars seemed to be the answer to the problems that had become prominent during the 1970-1971 years: it promised to provide Americans with absolute security..."(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 158) Furthermore this view advanced the notion that SDI would decrease US dependance on the political whims of its European allies. The search for global security, unilateral action, and mortgaged debt were to typify the Reagan presidency. In 1982 Reagan reasserted America's role as that of the world's policeman by intervening in Lebannon and later in Grenada. Reagan sent 1400 marines to intervene in the Syrian-Israeli conflict in Beirut of which the former was a client state of the USSR and the latter supported by the US. This action seemed ostensible at the time however, it provoked the terrorist bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, October 23, 1983, resulting in the deaths of 239 soldiers. To divert public opinion from this fiasco Reagan sent troops to Grenada ostensibly to depose the pro-Cuban government. The invasion plan was drawn in such haste that it relied on tourist maps. The limited success of this mission was more psychological in its effect rather than establishing clear cut military objectives in the Caribbean. Rather the overall effect of this intervention along with Desert Storm under Bush, was the permanent rest of the US's defeat in Vietnam and characterized what Lafeber described as the resurgence of 'militant patriotism' "Americans gloried in the episode as a sign that they were overcoming their Vietnam inspired fear of using military force."(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 158) Between 1984-1985, Congress earmarked 1 trillon dollars to be spent on defense related programs. However, Americans had to contend with deficits unbeknownst to consumers at the time until the recession of 1989, in which that deficit was increasing by 100 billion dollars annually. This also resulted in extreme cuts in social health and welfare programs. The US economy, especially domestic manufacturing was faltering especially in the failing auto industry. The US attempted to compensate for this by providing Corporate Welfare as an incentive for US corporations to maintain production facilities on US soil. However, as a caveot emptor: the US spent a billion dollars to bail out the Chrysler Corporation only to lose Chrslyer to Germany's Daimler Benz in 1997. By 1985 the US was in debt to the rest of the world and by 1987 it had become the largest debtor nation. Even today it has struggled to pay its UN dues. The decline in economic power by both superpowers was brought on by increased sacrifice of opportunity costs afforded by their mutually antagonisitic and anachronistic militarization programs. The Cold War ended because the two superpowers could not afford the costs associated with militarization, and while America won the propaganda war, it is still having to pay for its success in far excess of its intial strategic net gains as the following data demonstrates. While the US was able to later claim victory in winning the cold war, the effect was more of a propaganda coup than an actual long term gain. According to Thomas G. Paterson, in his essay, "Superpower Decline And Hegemonic Survival,' "Alliance building, military expansion, clandestine operations and interventionisim spawning galloping defense budgets amounting to trillions of dollars over four decades. US military spending stood at 13.5 billion in 1949, averaged 40 billion a year in the 1950's, rose to 54 billion in 1960 and 90 billion in 1970 (largely because of the Vietnam War) and soared to 155 billion in 1980. By 1988...more than 300 billion...the defense department was spending an average of 28 million an hour..America's massive military spending chipped away at the nations infrastructre, contributing to the relative decline of the United States and stimulating the movement toward Soviet - American detente. Defense spending demanded capital, which the Federal government had to borrow, forcing up interest rates...federal debt, which stood at 257 billion in 1950, 286 billion in 1960, 371 billion in 1970 and 908 billion in 1980. By 1986 the debt had reached a staggering 2.1 trillion. "The compelling point is that the Cold War was exceedingly costly. With finite resources the US government had to make choices. Money spent on the military and foreign interventions was not spent on building america at home..Defense spending became Keynesianisim on steroids..nations that spend heavily on armaments, such as the US and UK, have forfeited valuable gains in industrial productivity and economic growth..Measurable economic decline compelled American foreign policymakers, however, reluctantly at times, to take steps towards ending the Cold War." ('Major Problems In American Foreign Relations,' 4th edition, V2,
pgs. 728-31)In 1986, 19% of the federal budget went to debt
servicing, while 28% went to defense related expenditures, 11% went
to Health, and only 3% of that budget was alloted to education.
*** "We in no way aspire to be the bearer of ultimate truth." -December 1988, Gorbachev to the General Assembly of the United Nations. This statement has been regarded as the first act of ideological surrender by the USSR, source: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The CIA's Credibility," The National Interest (Winter 1995/96), p. 111. For the full text of Gorbachev's speech, see FBIS-SOV-99-236, 8 December 1988, pp. 11-19. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Breznechev as the new soviet premiere. Unlike the Soviet leaders before him Gorbachev had a statesman education and was not ideologically driven to the hard line like his predecessors. These former Russian leaders had to contend with a longstanding feud between Tsarist-Bolshevik and European monarchs, that dictated thematic links between Russia's imperial phase of expansion and its cold war definition of security power blocs. Gorbachev had experience with western diplomatic negotiations and understood that the USSR could not keep with western 'high tech' industrialization and trade consolidation that was fast disentegrating traditional notions of territory and power blocs. Gorbachev's accomadation to change was to implement his twin policies of perestrokia and glasnost, i.e., economic liberalization and openess of disclosure in the market and in the government. The Reagan Doctrine was directed primarily at keeping the Soviet's out of the Third world and dispatching troops or supporting coups and anti-communist movements in countries that had real or nominal soviet influence and support. The US would extend itself into the Angolan Civil War, support Afghanistan rebels in their 'Vietnam like war' with the Soviet's as well as implementing a scaled down version of flexible response in Cambodia, against Pol Pot's, Maoist Khmer Rouge. Reagan maintained that containment in this fashion could be done in a cost efficient manner via deficit spending and massive military spending on new technologies that could undercut Soviet troop strengths. The new American military machine was to act as a 'deterrence to unprovoked aggression' as Reagan's vice president, Bush would later state as justification for US intervention in Iraq in Desert Storm in 1991. The Reagan doctrine in reality only worked in Afghanistan and it was to be developed in a wider context of limiting weapons proliferation among the two superpowers. Reagan and Gorbachev were able to conduct arms reduction summits in which both sides agreed to limit production of nuclear weapons culminating in a US brokered, Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. Both the US and the USSR were severly hampered by deficits imposed by 50 years of vigilant military mobilization, and weapons proliferation. Politically, and economically this bipolar balance of power system could not maintain the free flow of international commerce through this framework of two competing global power blocs. The worst failing of the Reagan doctrine happened in Latin America. The Iran-Contra affair and the ensuing scandal was key in bringing down key members of the administration as had Watergate had done for Nixon's administration. In 1981 the CIA began a system of covert ops to overthrow the Sandinista government which had come to power in 1979 after deposing a US-supported regime. In 1985 the CIA assembled a group of rebels known as the Contras who were to be supplied with weapons (and according to Gary Webb, possibly supply Crack Cocaine to LA) in their fight with the Leftist Sandinistas. However, the operation faced numerous pitfalls in organization and by no means did the contras enjoy popular support. With the Reagan Administration hardpressed to come up with additional funding, Lt. Col. Oliver North working for the NSC arrived at a plan in which funds could be derived from 'other sources.' The resulting plan culminated in the arms for hostages deal in which the administration sold weapons to Iran in return for hostages and diverted the profits to the Contras. Oliver North and his hidden superiors would later conceal or destroy documents when Congress began to delve into the sources of Contra Human rights violations. This scandal marked the end of the Reagan Presidency. Reagan left the Bush administration with a huge deficit and a reccessionary economy. However, as John Gaddis maintains, he presided over the thawing of the Cold war and was instrumental in securing concessions from the USSR at a time where US Soviet relations exceededeven Nixon's detente strategies. Enter George H.W. Bush as the new president in 1988. As a former director of the CIA under Ford and texas congressman, orginally from Conneticut, was somewhat the last of Cold War decommissars. However, when he assumed the Presidency the Cold War vanished, and the Soviet's now Russians, were full blown capitalist advocators. East Germany was given the right to democratize and the Berlin Wall itself, long an enduring image of a divided globe was torn down. In 1990 the two germany's were reunited after 45 years of seperation and Allied occupation. In 1991 a military coup led by Boris Yeltsin toppled Gorbachev and Soviet Communisim from power in Russia almost altogether, consiging once powerful hardliners to irrelevant positions in the Duma. The Cold War ended when the statues of Lenin and Stalin were torn asunder from their foundations. In 1991, a test to America's new found singular superpower status would come when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Iraq, Once a former Soviet and American ally during the last twenty years of the cold war, now found himself shunned by his former patrons at the UN Security Council. In less than a year US and European coalitional forces defeated Saddam's Iraqi republican guard in a regional bloc once solely beholden to Soviet hegemony. With the US's quick victory in this campaign, came along with it the ideological view that it had finally recovered from its Vietnam Syndrome.The Russians accepted chaos capitalism instead of ordered statist socialism and so thus began a new phase of US interventionism in the newly reconstituted multipolar world. In describing the fall of the USSR one is reminded of Gorbachev's famous statement, "..on 25 October 1989, as Communist governments began to tumble in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev's spokesman, Gennadii Gerasimov, coined the most memorable phrase of all, when he told reporters with Gorbachev in Helsinki, Finland, that the "Frank Sinatra Doctrine" had replaced the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Soviets, referring to the singer's signature ballad, "I did it my way."Russia determined the means of its own fall due to it's over reliance on social science models that had few applications outside the ideological realm of academia. This nexus also existed in US Cold War foreign policy, essentially, policy formulated out of ideology that was endeared to the bipolar balance of power, as sure as the defense contractors on both sides of the curtain had ready supply schedules as well. Rational policy versus the irrational or a-rational variants were seldom few if not found rarely in between the dichotomies, of militarization and containment, or of American Foreign Policy itself. CONCLUSIONEpilogue |
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